Research and Development

As well as providing production computing services NERSC also participates in research and development activities in order to ensure the high performance computing systems of the future continue to meet the needs of scientists.

NERSC assess available HPC system solutions using a combination of application benchmarks and microbenchmarks. By understanding the requirements of the NERSC workload we drive changes in computing architecture that will result in better HPC system architectures for scientific computing in future generation machines. Read More »

Running efficiently on future low-power, manycore system architectures will pose a major challenge to almost all scientific application codes. DOE supercomputer centers are working together now to plan and coordinate how they will help enable science teams take advantage of next-generation systems. Over the next couple of years, various DOE labs will be installing a variety of next generation systems which will both challenge users exploit them efficiently and provide needed testbeds in the… Read More »

Dynamic Frequency Scaling
One means to lower the energy required to compute is to reduce the power usage on a node. One way to accomplish this is by lowering the frequency at which the CPU operates. However, reducing the clock speed increases the time to solution, creating a potential tradeoff. NERSC continues to examine how such methods impact its operations and its workload. See a recent paper on this topic here. Read More »

Learn about NERSC's research and development of exascale computing systems that deliver high impact across science domains, and demonstrate a new model for interaction between laboratories and vendors to create highly effective computing platforms. Read More »

Strategic Partnerships in Advanced Computing @ NERSC
American innovation is strongly rooted in scientific discovery. Scientific computing is an increasingly key ingredient in that innovation. NERSC partners with researchers in both the public and private sectors to develop new capabilities in modeling, simulation and data analytics.NERSC has been serving scientific teams with scientific computing and data services for 40 years. We lead the field in reliable and advanced computing, serving over… Read More »

shifter: Bringing Linux containers to HPC
NERSC is working to increase flexibility and usability of its HPC systems by enabling Docker-like Linux container technology. Linux containers allow an application to be packaged with its entire software stack - including some portions of the base OS files - as well defining needed user environment variables and application "entry point". Containers may provide an abstract way of deploying portable applications and even automating the execution… Read More »

Alliance for Application Performance at Extreme Scale
NERSC has partnered with the Alliance for Computing at Extreme Scale (ACES) collaboration of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) to form the Alliance for Application Performance at Extreme Scale (APEX).
The focus is on Application Performance of High Performance Computers and the APEX collaboration is intended to result in the procurement, for delivery in FY20, of two platforms:
The NERSC… Read More »